The Grapes of Death - Jean Rollin's Most Frightening Film

 

Review by Steve D. Stones

Although made in 1978, the opening scene of The Grapes of Death (French title Les Raisins De La Mort!) reflects the times in which we live today with the Coronavirus pandemic. Winery workers dressed in cloth coverings and masks on their faces walk the fields of the Roubles wine making vineyard in central France while spraying pesticides on the grape crops. Tractors also drive over the fields spraying pesticides.

A young vineyard worker named Kowalski collapses in the arms of his supervisor after driving the fields in a tractor and complains of having a fever and neck pains. The boss dismisses his complaints and orders him back to the fields to work. He tells Kowalski that more tightly fitting masks are soon to arrive.

After his shift, Kowalski boards a train with only two other young women college students on board who are traveling to Spain. One of the girls named Elizabeth (Marie George Pascal) leaves her compartment on the train to find another empty compartment. While Elizabeth sits in the compartment reading a magazine, Kowalski enters the compartment and sits down. His neck and face begin to drip with a disgusting ooze of pus. This frightens Elizabeth, so she runs out of the compartment as Kowalski slowly chases after her. Elizabeth finds her friend Brigitte dead in another compartment. She pulls the emergency stop cord on the train and quickly runs from the train.

After walking for hours in the French countryside, Elizabeth arrives in a small village and runs to knock on the doors of local residents to get help and call the police. She enters the home of Antoinette (Patricia Cartier) and her father. Antoinette's father has a strange growth on his left hand – similar to the growth Elizabeth saw on Kowalski's neck and face on the train. The father and daughter offer Elizabeth a glass of wine as she desperately pleads to use their telephone to call the police. They tell her that their phone and car do not work.

Antoinette and her father insist that Elizabeth stay with them as she tries to flee the house. She is taken to a bedroom upstairs where she finds Antoinette's mother lying dead on a bed with her throat slashed. Antoinette explains to Elizabeth that it was her father that killed her mother. She gives Elizabeth the car keys to leave the village, but both girls are confronted by the father as they try to leave the house. Antoinette is raped and impaled with a pitch fork by her father as Elizabeth leaves the house in the car.

After crushing Antoinette's father against a rock with the car, Elizabeth drives to another nearby village and is confronted by another young man who has a strange growth on his forehead oozing with pus. Elizabeth leaves the car after shooting the man in the head with a gun. She then encounters Lucy (Mirella Rancelot), a blind girl who has wandered away from the nearby village.

Lucy and Elizabeth make their way back to Lucy's home after walking the French countryside all evening. The village is a grim sight of dead bodies lying on the ground and fires burning homes throughout the village. Lucy is desperate to find her brother Lucas (Paul Bisciglia). When Lucas is found, he too has a growth on his face – along with the rest of the villagers who appear to be zombies.

Nailed to a door in crucifixion style, Lucy is found raped and dead, killed by her brother Lucas. Lucas decapitates Lucy in the most gruesome scene of the film. The village zombies begin to chant - “Lucy, we love you, Lucy, we love you”

Elizabeth is pulled into a house in the village by porn actress Brigitte Lahaie. Lahaie's character does not have a name in the film, so I will refer to her as Lahaie. Elizabeth is told by Lahaie that the house is owned by the local mayor and his wife, both were killed by the villagers. She also tells Elizabeth that they will be safe if they remain in the house.

Eventually leaving the mayor's house, Lahaie incapacitates Elizabeth outside the house so the zombie villagers can attack her. In a sexy see-thru night gown, Lahaie blazes the town with a torch while walking two dogs. Two men in a pick up truck, Paul (Felix Marten) and his friend Lucien (Serge Marquand) arrive to save Elizabeth. Lahaie removes her night gown to prove to the two men that she is not marked like the rest of the village zombies. Director Jean Rollin never misses an opportunity to show naked female flesh in his films, as Lahaie has done for him many times.

Elizabeth, Paul and Lucien eventually make their way to the vineyard where Elizabeth's fiance Michel (Michel Herval) is employed. The trio determine that the zombie outbreak of the villagers must have been a result of the wine consumed by the villagers at the Grape Harvest Festival a week earlier. Paul and Lucien claim they were immune because they drank beer at the festival instead of wine.

It's no mistake that throughout the entire film Elizabeth wears a purple colored shirt, the color of grapes and royalty, as she stands in a winery tank at the end of the film with the purple walls of the tank sharply contrasting the purple of her shirt. The blood of her fiance Michel drips on her face from above the tank. The blood sacrifice symbolism in Christianity is apparent in this final sequence of the film – both with the blood on Elizabeth's face and the reference of wine as part of the sacrificial ritual. This scene connects well with the crucifixion of Lucy in an earlier scene. I'm not sure if director Rollin had this symbolism in mind as he constructed the final scene, but viewers could certainly interpret it this way.

The Grapes of Death may be Rollin's most commercial effort in film making and is said to be the first French zombie film. It is certainly Rollin's most frightening and well-made film. Most of Rollin's previous films are an exercise in strange surrealism and have interesting elements of experimentation to them. The Grapes of Death has often been compared to George Romero's Night of The Living Dead (1968) and The Crazies (1973). Both Romero and Rollin employ zombies to communicate the perils of a natural disaster. Happy viewing. (Watch the trailer here.)

The scariest scenes in horror films -- take 2

Editor's note: This month, in honor of Halloween, Plan9Crunch bloggers Steve D. Stones and Doug Gibson will share what they both see as the five scariest minutes in film. First was Doug's five creepy moments, and here are Steve's.
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1). Night of The Living Dead (1968) – After witnessing her brother being attacked by a zombie in a Pennsylvania graveyard, Barbara (Judith O’Dea) runs to a nearby farmhouse to hide. She walks up stairs with a horrified look on her face and a kitchen knife in hand. The shadows of the banister cast across her face as the camera quickly zooms in closely to reveal a rotting corpse lying on the floor at the top of the stairs.

2). Poltergeist (1982). – A paranormal researcher investigating reports of ghosts in the suburban home of a young family goes to the kitchen to find something to eat.  He places a raw piece of meat from the refrigerator on the kitchen counter while eating a chicken leg. The meat suddenly starts to crawl slowly across the counter and the piece of chicken in his mouth spits out maggots. He runs to the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror. While looking in the mirror, he starts to pull the flesh off his face as chunks fall into the sink and blood drips everywhere.

3). The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) – After being terrorized by an inbred family of cannibals, including Leatherface – a chainsaw carrying psycho wearing a human skin mask, Sally (Marilyn Burns) is gagged and bound to a chair made of human arms. The grandpa of the family drinks Sally’s blood and attempts to knock her out with a hammer, but is too weak. This scene is so grueling that the sweat pouring from the faces of the actors involved heightens the uncomfortable, uneasy feeling the viewer experiences while the scene unfolds.  Sally eventually gets free and jumps out the window as Leatherface chases her once again down with a chainsaw – the most famous scene of the film.

4). Nosferatu (1922) – In this German Expressionist masterpiece of the silent era, Hutter – a real estate agent, is trapped inside the castle of Count Orlock. Hutter discovers the crypt where Orlock sleeps at night. Peeking through the crack of a stone coffin lid, Hutter can see the count lying in the coffin. He quickly pushes the stone lid off the coffin as the count stares directly at the camera in a frozen glance. This scene will chill your blood.

5). Jaws (1975) – Police chief Brody (Roy Scheider), a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and Captain Quint (Robert Shaw) are onboard a boat called the Orca to hunt down a giant shark terrorizing the sunbathers and swimmers of the ocean town of Amity. Brody leans over the boat to throw a “chum line” of fish guts into the water to attract the shark.  A giant shark raises its head from the water as Brody throws the line into the water. He immediately stands upright and walks backward with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and quietly says the most famous line in the film to Captain Quint – “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

Happy Halloween!

Steve D. Stones

The Legacy of George A. Romero (1940 - 2017)

By Steve D. Stones

In honor of the legacy of director George A. Romero, here are five of my most favorite Romero films. Romero's impact on the horror film industry cannot be objectively measured or overstated. Romero was a true maverick loved by those who worked with him. He will be greatly missed.

1. Night of The Living Dead (1968). Here is the zombie horror movie that lays the foundation for every zombie movie that follows. A young woman named Barbara is attacked in a Pennsylvania cemetery by a zombie. She finds her way to a small farm house occupied by five other people hiding in the basement. News footage seen on a television gives the film a realistic, documentary feel that continually puts the viewer on the edge of his seat. The occupants of the farmhouse fight for their lives to stay alive. Our hero is an African-American man, Duane Jones, who does not triumph in the end, but makes a strong political statement on the coat tails of Martin Luther King Jr. and the race riots of the 1960s. Remade in 1990.
2. The Crazies (1973). Romero continues on with a post-apocalyptic theme seen in Night of The Living Dead, and will continue even further in Dawn of The Dead. Like Night of The Living Dead, this film also has a realistic, documentary feel that leaves the viewer nervous and tense. It shows how our trusted institutions, such as law enforcement, news media and military, can be torn apart in the event of a tragedy. No one is to be trusted or can be turned to in the event of a disaster. A cynical view, but one which permeated American culture in the mid-1970s after President Nixon's resignation. A film which coincides well with the Watergate Era. Also known as Code Name: Trixie. Remade in 2010.
3. Martin (1978). This creative film is an interesting take on the vampire myth. Martin is a peculiar young man who has a taste for blood – literally and figuratively. There's just one problem. Martin does not have fangs like a vampire, nor does he sleep in coffins during the day or avoid sunlight. All the established vampire iconography is stripped away in this film. Martin even has to use razor blades to get blood from his victims. Romero has often mentioned Martin as his best film. Many film critics agree.
4. Dawn of The Dead (1979). Occurring just a few years after Night of The Living Dead, this film is a direct commentary on the consumer culture of the American lifestyle. Even in death, American zombies have the mind dulling sense to flock to a shopping mall to consume more stuff they cannot afford. The zombie becomes a parody and cartoon character, adding to Romero's critique of consumer culture. The irony here is that the living want it all too, but eventually end up dead because of their greed. We are all mindless zombies who want to consume more and more, in the eyes of Romero's Dawn of The Dead. Remade in 2004.
5. Creepshow (1982). An anthology of five short stories in comic book fashion, Romero teamed up with horror writer Stephen King for this installment. The first story, Father's Day, is my favorite of the five. Here, a deceased father exhibits his patriarchal power over his daughter, even from the grave. He crawls his way out of the grave to complain about not getting a Father's Day cake. Actor Ed Harris gets smothered with his tombstone after falling into the grave. The father finishes the day by serving up his daughter's head on a platter. Who could ask for a better Father's Day?

May you rest in peace – George A. Romero, knowing that your zombies have made a profound impact on cinema and the horror genre. We love you George.

For Halloween -- Scariest scenes from Steve Stones

Editor's note: This week, in honor of Halloween, Plan9Crunch bloggers Steve D. Stones and Doug Gibson will share what they both see as the five scariest minutes in film. 
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1). Night of The Living Dead (1968) – After witnessing her brother being attacked by a zombie in a Pennsylvania graveyard, Barbara (Judith O’Dea) runs to a nearby farmhouse to hide. She walks up stairs with a horrified look on her face and a kitchen knife in hand. The shadows of the banister cast across her face as the camera quickly zooms in closely to reveal a rotting corpse lying on the floor at the top of the stairs.

2). Poltergeist (1982). – A paranormal researcher investigating reports of ghosts in the suburban home of a young family goes to the kitchen to find something to eat.  He places a raw piece of meat from the refrigerator on the kitchen counter while eating a chicken leg. The meat suddenly starts to crawl slowly across the counter and the piece of chicken in his mouth spits out maggots. He runs to the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror. While looking in the mirror, he starts to pull the flesh off his face as chunks fall into the sink and blood drips everywhere.

3). The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) – After being terrorized by an inbred family of cannibals, including Leatherface – a chainsaw carrying psycho wearing a human skin mask, Sally (Marilyn Burns) is gagged and bound to a chair made of human arms. The grandpa of the family drinks Sally’s blood and attempts to knock her out with a hammer, but is too weak. This scene is so grueling that the sweat pouring from the faces of the actors involved heightens the uncomfortable, uneasy feeling the viewer experiences while the scene unfolds.  Sally eventually gets free and jumps out the window as Leatherface chases her once again down with a chainsaw – the most famous scene of the film.

4). Nosferatu (1922) – In this German Expressionist masterpiece of the silent era, Hutter – a real estate agent, is trapped inside the castle of Count Orlock. Hutter discovers the crypt where Orlock sleeps at night. Peeking through the crack of a stone coffin lid, Hutter can see the count lying in the coffin. He quickly pushes the stone lid off the coffin as the count stares directly at the camera in a frozen glance. This scene will chill your blood.

5). Jaws (1975) – Police chief Brody (Roy Scheider), a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and Captain Quint (Robert Shaw) are onboard a boat called the Orca to hunt down a giant shark terrorizing the sunbathers and swimmers of the ocean town of Amity. Brody leans over the boat to throw a “chum line” of fish guts into the water to attract the shark.  A giant shark raises its head from the water as Brody throws the line into the water. He immediately stands upright and walks backward with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and quietly says the most famous line in the film to Captain Quint – “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

Happy Halloween!

Steve D. Stones

My top five scariest scenes in horror cinema history -- from Steve D. Stones

Editor's note: This week, in honor of Halloween, Plan9Crunch bloggers Steve D. Stones and Doug Gibson will share what they both see as the five scariest minutes in film. First is Steve's five creepy moments, and Doug's will follow later this week.

---

1). Night of The Living Dead (1968) – After witnessing her brother being attacked by a zombie in a Pennsylvania graveyard, Barbara (Judith O’Dea) runs to a nearby farmhouse to hide. She walks up stairs with a horrified look on her face and a kitchen knife in hand. The shadows of the banister cast across her face as the camera quickly zooms in closely to reveal a rotting corpse lying on the floor at the top of the stairs.

2). Poltergeist (1982). – A paranormal researcher investigating reports of ghosts in the suburban home of a young family goes to the kitchen to find something to eat.  He places a raw piece of meat from the refrigerator on the kitchen counter while eating a chicken leg. The meat suddenly starts to crawl slowly across the counter and the piece of chicken in his mouth spits out maggots. He runs to the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror. While looking in the mirror, he starts to pull the flesh off his face as chunks fall into the sink and blood drips everywhere.

3). The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) – After being terrorized by an inbred family of cannibals, including Leatherface – a chainsaw carrying psycho wearing a human skin mask, Sally (Marilyn Burns) is gagged and bound to a chair made of human arms. The grandpa of the family drinks Sally’s blood and attempts to knock her out with a hammer, but is too weak. This scene is so grueling that the sweat pouring from the faces of the actors involved heightens the uncomfortable, uneasy feeling the viewer experiences while the scene unfolds.  Sally eventually gets free and jumps out the window as Leatherface chases her once again down with a chainsaw – the most famous scene of the film.

4). Nosferatu (1922) – In this German Expressionist masterpiece of the silent era, Hutter – a real estate agent, is trapped inside the castle of Count Orlock. Hutter discovers the crypt where Orlock sleeps at night. Peeking through the crack of a stone coffin lid, Hutter can see the count lying in the coffin. He quickly pushes the stone lid off the coffin as the count stares directly at the camera in a frozen glance. This scene will chill your blood.

5). Jaws (1975) – Police chief Brody (Roy Scheider), a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and Captain Quint (Robert Shaw) are onboard a boat called the Orca to hunt down a giant shark terrorizing the sunbathers and swimmers of the ocean town of Amity. Brody leans over the boat to throw a “chum line” of fish guts into the water to attract the shark.  A giant shark raises its head from the water as Brody throws the line into the water. He immediately stands upright and walks backward with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and quietly says the most famous line in the film to Captain Quint – “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

Happy Halloween!

Steve D. Stones

Night of The Living Dead (1968) – The Godfather of Zombie Movies

By Steve D. Stones

There’s no question that director George A. Romero is the Godfather of the zombie movie. His Night of The Living Dead (1968) is the standard to which all following zombie movies are measured. Prior to this landmark black and white film, the zombie was portrayed as a figure created through voodoo ritual. This zombie was a slow moving, brain dead person moving in a sort of somnambulistic trace. 

Romero changed this stereotype. In Romero’s world, zombies are vicious creatures who were once our friends, neighbors and loved ones, and they eat the flesh of the victims they attack. This was a big change from the voodoo zombie seen in Jacques Tourneur’s “ I Walked with a Zombie (1943).”

Watch closely, and you will see a film steeped in political and social commentary, and one which makes a statement about the breakdown of the family unit. The hero is a young African American man named Ben – played by stage actor Duane Jones. To cast a black man as the lead role and hero was risky business in the 1960s following a decade of racial tension, riots and Dr. Martin Luther King’s march on Birmingham.

The story may be familiar to you by now. Night of The Living Dead concerns a group of terrified individuals who have trapped themselves in a Pennsylvania farmhouse to protect themselves from hungry zombies. As the group fights desperately to survive the attack of zombies outside the house, the real struggle is between two men – Ben (Duane Jones) and Harry Cooper – played by Karl Hardman. Both are desperate to have complete control over the situation. The two continually argue with each other through the entire film.

Cooper’s wife and child and a young couple have barricaded themselves in the basement. Ben insists that everyone come upstairs and protect the ground level of the house. Cooper rejects this request, and a conflict between the two men occurs. Both men think they have the best plan for protecting the entire group, but as we see in the end – the zombies eventually break into the house, and only Ben is able to race downstairs and barricade himself in the basement for protection.

Ben survives the attack, but is mistaken for a zombie as a posse approaches the house and kills him. His body is thrown on a pile of dead zombies and burned at the end of the film. No heroes prevail in Romero’s zombie world.

The opening sequence of Barbara (Judith O’Dea) and Johnny (Russell Streiner) driving through an empty Pennsylvania cemetery covered with fallen leaves is one of the most effective scenes in horror cinema. Without showing a single zombie in the opening, the viewer immediately knows something dramatic and intense is about to happen. From the moment Johnny is attacked by a zombie wandering through the cemetery, the film never lets up on the zombie assault.

Shot on a shoestring budget by a group of Pennsylvania filmmakers working in television and commercials, the group formed the production name Image Ten based on the ten investors who put up the money and worked on the film. For further information on Night of The Living Dead, see Danny Peary’s “Cult Movies volume one” and Joe Kane’s excellent book “Night of The Living Dead – Behind The Scenes of The Most Terrifying Zombie Movie Ever.”

A remake was made in 1990 and 2006. The 2006 remake is a 3-D movie that comes with 3-D glasses if you buy the DVD.  Avoid the 30^th Anniversary print with new scenes added. Romero had nothing to do with this version, and if you see it – you’ll understand why. The new scenes add nothing to the original film, and do not blend well with the original print.  Also avoid the computer colorized print that was released on VHS in the 1980s. The zombies are portrayed in a ridiculous green color that is laughable.

Don’t miss Romero’s excellent 1978 follow up – Dawn of The Dead. This sequel steps up the graphic horror and violence about ten notches and is in color. Happy viewing. 

Santa Claws, a terror-filled Christmas with Debbie Rochon

By Steve D. Stones

I have to admit that when I purchased this film on videotape in the late 1990s at a local Media Play store, I bought it mostly because it had a busty picture of Debbie Rochon on the video box cover. The back of the video cover also had a sexy girl in a bikini being attacked by the villain of the film, The Hooded Claw. This is obviously a clever marketing tactic to sell the video. After all, sex does indeed sell, even if the film is a total bust (no pun intended).

My other interest in purchasing this film was that I had heard that many of the actors involved in the original 1968 Night of The Living Dead were involved in this film, such as Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, Bill Hinzman and John Russo. Russo played a zombie in Night of The Living Dead and was also screenwriter. Russo wrote and directed Santa Claws.

A teenage boy named Wayne witnesses his widowed mother in bed with his uncle Joe on Christmas Eve. This angers him, so he finds a gun in the bedroom dresser and kills both his mother and uncle Joe. That’s the last Christmas they’ll ever have! Wayne is rushed to a psychiatric clinic for mental evaluation. Director John Russo has a cameo in this scene as a police detective.

Fast forward 10 years later. Wayne is now a grown man living next door to Raven Quinn, a model and actress working in soft-core adult films for Scream Productions.  Although Raven has a Master’s Degree in Zoology, she chooses to be in the soft-core industry for the easy money. Wayne has become a fanatical fan of Raven, and has a shrine devoted to all her movie collectibles, including a doll in her likeness that he fantasizes making out with.

Raven’s marriage to her husband Eric is on the rocks.  Her husband is unfaithful by seeing one of his employees in his spare time. While picking up her children from her mother in laws home, Raven has an argument with her mother and sister in law. Both do not approve of Raven’s occupation as an adult film actress and model, even though her husband makes his living as a porn photographer. It seems it’s OK for members of their family to be involved with porn, but it’s not OK for an in law to be involved in the business too. Families sometimes have double standards.

While visiting Raven in her home, Wayne discovers that her marriage is quickly going downhill, so he volunteers to baby-sit her two children. Raven reveals to Wayne that some of the girls at Scream Productions may eclipse her popularity as the most popular “Scream Queen.”

In an attempt to maintain Raven’s popularity, Wayne then decides to murder one of the girls at Scream Productions while dressed in dark overalls and a black ski hat. He calls himself The Hooded Claw from a character in a Scream Queen film, and kills his victims with a gardening claw. He even manages to attack and kill a Scream Queen producer, played by Night of The Living Dead star Karl Hardman.

Later, Raven asks Wayne to baby-sit her two children. He puts sleeping pills in their hot chocolate so he can leave the home to go out on another murdering rampage.

Eric decides to leave his mistress and go back to Raven. When arriving home, he discovers that Wayne has doped the children to make them sleep. He leaves the home to go look for Raven at Scream Productions.

Before Eric arrives, Wayne sneaks into Scream Productions and kills several employees. Dressed in a black Santa suit, he waits for Eric to arrive and attacks both him and Raven. The two men struggle in a fight, but Raven eventually kills Wayne with his own gardening claw.

Aside from the fact that the film takes place during Christmas time, it is really not much of a Christmas film at all. Several strip tease sequences in the film show girls dancing around a Christmas tree and Christmas decorations, but the film is obviously more of a horror and soft-core sex film than a Christmas film. I'm sure the producers of this film were fully aware of this. Sometimes it makes good marketing sense to mix holidays with horror and sex.

Like so many Christmas horror films, the killer of the film really has no specific motivation for killing his victims. Even if he does, it doesn’t seem to be much of a motivation at all. In Silent Night, Deadly Night, for example, a young boy grows up to become a killer dressed in a Santa suit as a result of witnessing his parents killed by a man dressed as Santa when he was a child. In Santa Claws, Wayne the killer has even less of a motivation to kill his victims. He simply is a fan of a popular screen actress who does not want her fame to fade, so he begins to kill anyone who stands in her way of continued success. Is being a fan of anything really worth the risk of killing people?

Santa Claws is certainly not a Christmas film intended for the entire family, so I wouldn’t recommend that you watch this with the kids. Only fans of Debbie Rochon and soft-core sex and horror films need apply.